You can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. But you cannot domesticate Him, you cannot tame Him, you cannot make Him sweet and nice and pretty. He is who He is and He says what He says, and sometimes it’s hard to take.
In my experience, just about everybody out there thinks well of Jesus. They admire His character. They listen to His moral teachings – they listen, but do not necessarily obey. They glory in His healings, they are astonished by His miracles. But you can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. The one thing, however, you cannot do is domesticate Jesus. You cannot tame His fierce determination to be who He is and to do what He intends to do.
Once you take Jesus out of the safe confines of your private being and put Him out there in public, you find that He cannot be tamed. He will push back at you. Once you remove Jesus from the sanctuary of the church, the stained-glass windows and the pews, He becomes impossible to hold back. He will be who He will be, He will do what He intends to do, and He will go where He is called to go.
That gives fits to those of us who are tame and cautious. That gives the heebie-jeebies to those of us who want to live the world’s way and still think of ourselves as sort-of spiritual. For Jesus will push back at us and will challenge us from the tip of our scalps to the soles of our feet. You can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. But you cannot domesticate Him, you cannot tame Him, you cannot keep Him under wraps. He will push us.
Mark says that Jesus went about doing good: healing, teaching, and preaching, but always insisting that little or nothing be said. He would heal someone and then say, “Tell no one who did this for you.” He released a man from demons but asked him to go home and tell his friends what God, not Jesus, had done. He raised a young girl from death, and told her grateful family to say nothing to anyone, just give her something to eat. He unstopped a deaf man’s ears, and insisted on secrecy. He cured a blind man and then sent him away, telling him not even to go back to the village from which he had come. Healings, miracles, all done in secret. Private business.
But then the picture changes. The scene now is Caesarea Philippi. Jesus and His disciples are trudging along the road. Jesus is silent, in deep thought, as if He is making some sort of decision. Suddenly He stops. He has them all sit for a moment; then He raises a question. It’s one of those leading questions that you know has a Part Two, but you have to get through Part One first: “Who do people say that I am?” They spilled out the little tidbits they’d heard along the way. “Some say you are John the Baptist, come back after that business with Herod and Salome. Some say that you are Elijah, the forerunner of the Kingdom. And some say you are one of the ancient prophets, come back to teach us again. Lots of possibilities, Jesus. They like you out there. You are popular. They think well of you.”
Jesus, raising His eyes, sweeping His gaze across the whole group, pushed out the words, “But who do you say that I am?” Here comes Part Two of the final exam! “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter’s words sound like what Jesus wanted to hear. Peter’s reply seems to hit the mark, “You are the Messiah.” You are the chosen one of God, you are what Israel has been looking for, you are IT, Jesus. But that too is met with a stern order not to tell anyone.
What is wrong with this Jesus, that He does not want to spread His name or puff His fame? What is wrong with this Jesus, that He does not conform to our expectations? It all adds up to this one truth: you can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. But you cannot domesticate Him, you cannot tame Him, you cannot confine Him. He will be who He is.
And who is He? What does He do? At what you might think would be the pinnacle of success, with healings under His belt and the acclaim of the crowd ringing in His ears, with Peter and the others having arrived at the right conclusion – at such a time Jesus begins to speak of suffering, rejection, death. At the point when His team seems ready to go, Jesus tells them He must suffer, He must be rejected, and He must die.
And notice this phrase in Mark’s Gospel, “He said all this quite openly.” Isn’t that remarkable? All these other things He has done, but “Keep it secret, tell no one.” And now, when He decides to open up, it’s about negative things. It’s about unpleasant things. It’s about things we’d rather not think about. Suffering, rejection, death – “He said all this quite openly.”
You know, my counselor’s antennae begin to perk up. If I were to hear someone projecting that He would soon suffer and that everybody from the church people to the lawyers were out to get him, I would suspect a paranoia problem. If I were to hear someone repeatedly telling everyone around that he was going to die soon, I’d suspect clinical depression. I might even jump in to do what Peter did. “Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him.” Don’t say that kind of thing, Jesus. You cannot mean that. You don’t want them to hear that. It would be bad for business, Jesus. Nobody wants to join a movement where the leader speaks of suffering.
But remember: you can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. But you cannot domesticate Him, you cannot tame Him, you cannot keep Him under wraps. He will be who He is. And He will push back.
“Turning and looking at His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Peter has brought his conventional values and has tried to impose them on Jesus. But Jesus will not be confined. He will not be tamed or straitjacketed. For Him there is something more than this world’s value set.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father …”
Peter found out, and so will we. When we try to clamp Jesus down into this world’s values, He pushes back. His is a rebuke turned back on us. For you can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. But you cannot domesticate Him, you cannot tame Him, you cannot keep Him under wraps. He will be who He is. And He will live according to His values.
I
For one thing, Jesus does not follow the ambition path. He is not pushing onward and upward to achieve promotions and status. Jesus has done well out there in the itinerant preacher business. He has built a following. He has accumulated a measure of credibility. He has success awaiting Him. He could go far, maybe even shake the Romans loose from their stranglehold on the nation. He might win popularity with the people.
But He won’t do it. He just won’t do it. He will talk instead of suffering and of being rejected. He will speak of death. Clearly Jesus had never learned to craft His language so that it was politically correct. Obviously Jesus had not had the dubious benefits of experience on Madison Avenue. Sad to say, Jesus did not have a lawyer to insert all the conditional clauses. Jesus uses stark, bold language, language that slaps you in the face. Suffer, reject, death. And that won’t sell!
We live in a very competitive age. On the career track, some will do whatever they can to achieve a higher rung on the ladder. Whatever we have, we want more. Plain and simple, we want more. More money, more prestige, more acclaim. We want our multi-million dollar bonuses and even think we have earned them! And if we get that coveted promotion, it would never occur to us to do what Jesus did, to keep it a secret. No, we would shout it from the housetops: I am chief of the department! I am the head of the program! We forget, as one wag put it, that if you win the rat race, you are still just a rat! But our value system says climb, achieve, get to the top, put it on your resume, flesh it out on your website.
Jesus rebukes all that, every bit of it. Jesus turns our values upside down. “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Let me tell you a dirty little secret about pastors and churches. Let me permit you a glimpse of our private world of ambition. Lots of pastors are looking at moving on up. Lots of people in church positions are there only for the moment, watching and waiting for a chance to get to something bigger and better. I know one pastor who, as soon as he arrives at a new position, starts putting his name out there for the next one. And the sad thing is that churches reward him for it! He gets those calls, and moves on up, bigger and better each time! Now, if you will, contrast that to what you have had and what you are about to have. You have had a pastor who stayed with you for twenty-seven years; I am confident that during that time he could have moved on to bigger and better. Well, bigger, anyway; there may not be anything better! But he did not. He remained faithful to this call. He stayed by the stuff for you and for the Kingdom. For Charles Updike, this world’s values meant nothing; no career ambitions for him.
And, consider what you are getting in Pastor Long. He did not seek this church; you sought him. And are we bigger and better than Willow Meadows? No, we are smaller than Willow Meadows, and, for all that I can see, are not as far advanced as they in ministry and in outreach. He is not impressed by this world’s career and ambition values. He is one who wants to follow Christ. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” You should be awed into appreciation that you are receiving a pastor who will follow Jesus and will come to a church where, unless things turn around quickly, he may not always get paid on time! For with Jesus, it’s not about ambition, it’s not about more money, more prestige, more anything. It’s about doing what the Lord’s call requires.
II
But now notice that not only is Jesus not following the ambition path; but Jesus is also not going to follow the pleasure path that beckons so seductively. Jesus is not going to fall into the trap of taking it easy and just retiring to the old prophets’ home. Jesus knows that He is not to rest until His life’s work is done, and so He turns back the suggestion that He not go where He is headed. They said, “Don’t go to Jerusalem, Jesus; don’t go where you are not wanted. Don’t go taking on a fight. Leave it alone. Stay here with us. We’ll just have a good time together.”
But Jesus turns back in rebuke. No, Peter, I must go where the Father tells me to go. In another place He says, “I must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day, for the night comes, when no man can work.” Jesus had a sense of purpose, and would not rest until He accomplished it.
Never before our time have so many distractions beckoned so many people away from productive work and purposeful activity. A generation ago, only wealthy people took long vacations or lived in luxurious leisure. But now, a thousand delights await us. On any given day we can choose: will we go to the movies or will we attend a sporting event? Will we dine at the newest restaurant happy hour, or will we go home and flip through 150 digital channels looking for the latest MTV clip or the oldest “I Love Lucy” rerun? We have an immense capacity for leisure, unlike any previous generation. We are so easily distracted. Oh, I’ve been reading some of our Facebook entries, and some of us say over and over again that we really ought to get back to work, but Facebook is so much fun, it’s addictive. Distractions! We will find them all over the place. By the way, is anybody Twittering this sermon?
Now is there anything wrong with the pastimes I have mentioned? Not really. Is there any moral issue about using our time and our money for pleasure? No; but isn’t it strange that we have time for everything pleasurable but no time for service to others, no time for ministry, no time for outreach and witness? Isn’t there something out of kilter when our dollars flow so freely that we think nothing of spending hundreds on electronic gear or thousands on a season ticket, but grumble about tithing for Kingdom work?
Now I am not a killjoy. And I would not want you to hear me suggesting that to be a follower of Christ is all work and no play. I had occasion to remember this week that years ago, when I was president of the D. C. Baptist Ministers’ Conference, we organized a square dance for the pastors and their spouses. Just innocent recreation and fellowship. Since I was at that time interim pastor of another church, I arranged for the square dance to be held in the basement of that church on a Saturday night. On Sunday I made some quip about being a little sore from my exertions, and one member came up to me after the service and snapped, “It would have been better for the pastors to be out soul-winning than to waste their time dancing.” Well, maybe so; but recreation is good for the soul and the art of fellowship is needed if you are going to win friends. I am not opposed and Jesus is not opposed to our enjoying life.
But the issue is distraction. The issue is that we spend our time and our resources on things that do not satisfy. Jesus told His disciples on another occasion that His meat, His nourishment came from doing the work of the Father, and that He would not rest until that work was done.
What distracts us? Where do we waste our time? Where do we plant your energies so that, at the end of the day, there is nothing to show for it? When I look at my life thus far and look back at any given day, frankly I see too many lost opportunities and too much pointless activity. The world says, “Have fun.” The world says, “Take it easy.” “Relax, sit back, and enjoy.” All well and good and necessary. But my Savior turns back in rebuke, “If any want to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow.” Jesus will not kill my joy; but neither will He permit me to glide along the pleasure path and ignore the work that is to be done.
III
So finally, brothers and sisters, at the bottom line, Jesus will turn and rebuke us for climbing the ladder of ambition; and Jesus will turn and rebuke us for being trivial and frivolous. But also Jesus will rebuke our easy spirituality path. He will not let us off the hook about a clear, consistent, Christ-centered witness.
For if what we want most of all is just to get along, no fuss, no muss, then this is not going to get it, is it? “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words … of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when He comes …”. As much as you and I might like to think that we are doing all right just by keeping out of trouble and going to church and paying our bills and being nice to everybody, Jesus turns to rebuke us, for our witness is not clear and our care for the souls of others is not serious.
If you were with us last Sunday night in Journey class, you learned that hosts of people are turning away from the Christian faith. We will have again tonight a productive discussion about why this is happening. But one thing is clear already: that some of us no longer share our faith, some of us feel no urgency about others knowing Christ, some of us just keep on keeping secrets. When He said, “Tell no one”, we heard that, and stopped there. But the scene changed. At a critical point, He spoke openly. And the time is now for us: to speak openly. The time is now to be clear about who Jesus is. The time is now to stand and be counted. The time is now to recognize that, although we may look loony to our loved ones and nutty to our neighbors, that is a whole lot better than having Christ be ashamed of us. The time is now, as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”
Die, yes. Die to ambition, die to pleasure-seeking, die to political correctness. Die, to be sure. But for what? And with what expectation?
“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their [very] life?”
Oh, you can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. But you cannot domesticate Him, you cannot tame Him, you cannot make Him sweet and nice and pretty. He is who He is and He says what He says. And He gives what He gives – a rebuke turned back on those who listen to the siren songs of ambition and pleasure and silence. But for those who follow Him, death and then life. Suffering, rejection, but then life.
“I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold; I’d rather be His than have riches untold. I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands; I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hands, than to be the king of a vast domain, and be held in sin’s dread sway. I’d rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today.”
You can admire Jesus, you can think well of Jesus, you can even love Jesus. But you cannot domesticate Him, you cannot tame Him, you cannot make Him sweet and nice and pretty. He is who He is and He says what He says. He bids us come and die. But when we die, we find life abundant, life eternal. Come. Come.
